You think it’s died off? Would that were so!
The Original Post:
Your position (No, it’s not a response to the post, I am not implying that):
While very few conspiracy theories ever fully die, the 9/11 movement is in intensive care. Most of its leaders have grown up, given up, or moved on (only the scam of AE911T lives on) the rank and file have moved on to other things - a lot of them moved away once Bush was out of office, and some of thm grew up. The handful that remain find themselves trying to work with less and less.
This is a great summary of the point I was making, thanks.
I want to point out one more thing: The people who are left in the 9/11 movement are pretty heavily Anti-Semitic. That evergreen hatred of Jews is what the core uses to keep itself going. It was present from the beginning (a seriously nasty group convinced Dylan Avery to turn his fictional movie into Loose Change) but, during the heyday, the movement was big enough that most people in it weren’t hateful and didn’t know about the hateful members. Now, the hateful ones are all that’s left.
Something similar has happened to the Anti-Vaccine movement, in that the people who are now most vocal are the ones who are willing to ignore and deny the deaths of children to keep their ideas unchallenged. This was, again present from the beginning, but now that the group’s shrunk back, they’re the ones who are left.
My thanks to both of you, but if I felt qualified to go through these studies and pick the ones that fit the criteria of being both conclusive in their findings and not plausibly funded by pharmacetical companies, I wouldn’t have needed to ask this question on this board.
I understand (and have never doubted) that there is no link between autism and vaccines. I very specifically need to debunk the myth that the studies that show this are funded by big pharmaceutical companies, by pointing to a few high quality studies that were positively(again, within reasonable bounds) not funded by pharmaceutical companies.
If I have time today or tomorrow, I’ll take a look at them, but keep in mind, most studies on drugs ARE done by drug companies, because the health authorities required them to, and they have access to the best data.
Have you considered turning this around, and asking your friend to supply studies suggesting vaccines are dangerous, and debunking them?
Chikni,
You could also point out that vaccines help prevent autism. The rubella vaccine (the R in the MMR) is a known cause of autism.
The rubella virus, you mean.
Thank you.
Both your suggestion and j666’s on strategies for arguing against vaccine-autism links are well taken in general, but in this specific case, the person in question is my boss and I know how they think, hence my very specific question. Besides which, I would think such a list would be a good resource to have, given how often vaccine proponents are called pharma shills. I’m frankly a little surprised it isn’t already out there.
:smack:
I really should stop posting while attempting to prevent the four year old from doing her little Sherman’s March across the kitchen.
Posting the opposite of what you mean followed by a correction is pure boner fuel for CTers. Take the time to do it right.
I am human and I make mistakes. Sorry.
As for funding, the problem becomes what defines funding according to the anti-vax mentality. For example, here’s a crazy assed article by a leading anti-vax group. They’re accusing two friends of mine, Dorit Reiss and Karen Ernst of having all sorts of funding for their efforts from pharm companies.
That is completely crazy. Dorit is a law professor who happens to care passionately about vaccines. Karen is also just an ordinary person who also happens to care passionately about this issue. Neither person is taking funding from nefarious sources. In their world, when someone sits there and posts anti-vax material she’s just a mom “doing her homework.” When someone on the other side posts material that’s pro-vax, that person is clearly funded by pharm companies to lie.
It becomes possible for the people in question to draw all sorts of lunatic conclusions about funding that only exists in their own minds.
I know the profit margins on vaccines are very low, especially compared to other pharmaceuticals. Is there any good documentation that compares the amount spent on studies versus vaccine revenue for this mythical Big Pharm?
You also might want to point out how big alterna med is funded and how much money some of these idiots make by their quackery. For example, Andy Wakefield was handed thousands of dollars by lawyers bent on suing pharm companies. Dr. Mercola, he of the anti-vax nuttery and the supplement sales, lives in a huge mansion.
Chikni,
Does the CDC count to your boss as non-pharm funded?
Because here’s one they funded that found: “receipt of the MMR vaccine was not associated with increased risk of ASD, regardless of whether older siblings had ASD. These findings indicate no harmful association between MMR vaccine receipt and ASD even among children already at higher risk for ASD.”
It may be difficult for you to access the April 2015 JAMA study showing no connection between the MMR vaccine and autism. I do have online journal access and here’s where the money came from to conduct this research:
“Funding/Support: This project was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health, and the US Department of Health and Human Services under contract HHSN-271-2010-00033-C.”
So there’s one to start with. There are many more. It should be almost as easy to document funding sources for most studies validating vaccine safety, as it is for antivaxers to cast blanket suspicion on studies they don’t like as being “pharma-funded”. pubmed.org is a good place to begin.
“Shill” accusations are a common ploy used against scientists in a variety of fields. It for instance is “common knowledge” among anti-GMOers that studies demonstrating safety of GM foods/animal feed are bought and paid for by Monsatan and other companies. The reality is that a substantial number of the 2000+ research publications that validate GMO safety were conducted by independent scientists.
This won’t do Chikni any good though. The response will just be that Big Pharma has the government in its pocket through political donations and lobbyists, and so those doing the study make sure they achieve the “right” outcome because they know how to please their masters. You can’t win.
You can’t win with the hard core people. You can win with the bystanders and often some of the on-the-fencers. The hard core people will just accuse you of being one of their thirty thousand anti-vax trolls. So there’s value in making the effort.
Yeah, I’m not looking for something that will convince a hardcore conspiracy theorist. You can’t. Thanks for the responses to my question, Jackmanni and LavenderBlue.
Oh, then you are just in the wrong place all together - you need to post in this thread.
I’m not having much luck; I don’t have access to most of the journals, even at work, and the best studies have been conducted by large, well-respected consulting firms that - for some inexplicable reason - large pharmaceutical companies hire.
This is a free download of a report by the National Academies Press; sorry, I haven’t read it myself, and it is a government publication.
This is a narrow but persuasive study that demonstrates autism rates do not decrease when MMR vaccines are withdrawn.
Most of the abstracts I read are for small incremental statistical studies. Very important, but not persuasive to a non-researcher, or numbers geek.
I’ll keep looking.